


Fierce and Disquieting

by Carmarthen



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Crack, Crossover, Gen, Preslash if you squint, The Author Regrets Everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-06 22:42:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/740995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Montparnasse jumps an old man on the middle levels of Coruscant and gets more than he bargained for; Valjean has latent Jedi mind powers; and Jedi Knight Javert is obsessed with justice and/or Valjean. An extremely cracky fusion AU remix of Volume IV.—Saint-Denis, Book Fourth, Chapter II, plus that scene with Obi-Wan in the bar in <i>Star Wars: Attack of the Clones</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fierce and Disquieting

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a Tumblr gif set and my inability to not eventually _Star Wars_ AU everything. I have actually worked out why Javert is keeping tabs on Valjean (I am pretty sure in the _Star Wars_ Republic, you get a month of community service for stealing bread, not five years' hard labor, so Valjean is not a parole-breaker), but since I refuse to write more of this, it shall remain a mystery for this story.

Montparnasse was of a particular type of the Coruscant underworld: less than twenty, he was a prowling dandy with a pretty face, his hair dyed a deep blue and curled in the latest style, his lips rouged and his eyes bright with malice. He dressed with care, choosing only the height of fashion and the finest fabrics, and if he could not afford them, he stole. He was a child of the streets turned thief and killer, able to charm the drunken revellers of the middle levels and intimidate the scum of the lower with equal ease.

Coruscant was the world that never slept. No stars could be discerned in the sky between the mountainous buildings, save the afterburn of starships coming in for a landing on the uppermost levels. And on those levels where no hint of sky could be seen, a million lights--blue and orange and red, white and green--cast a million shadows. Montparnasse was the master of these shadows.

It was, by the chron, evening; but this firmly bourgeois level was already far from the sky, incandescent and shadowed at any time of day. An elderly human, bent and thoughtful, and dressed plainly, strolled along one of the walkways with an absent air, pausing every so often to look into the window of a shop before moving on.

Another figure followed him: it was a straight, slender figure that moved with the supple agility of a predator.

An observer would have felt a sense of foreboding, observing the two figures, and perhaps been tempted to cry out a warning as the old man passed in front of a dark alley. They would have been right to fear. The follower--who the reader has surely guessed is Montparnasse--leapt upon the old man and seized him by the collar of his shabby tunic, dragging him bodily into the alley. There was a scuffle, brief and violent, and when it ended one man lay flat on his back, with the knee of the other pressing painfully into his breast.

“Get up,” the old man told his humiliated predator. Montparnasse stood, brushing ineffectually at his clothing, which was thoroughly ruined with the muck of the alley, and trying to regain some air of dignity.

“How old are you?” said the old man.

“Nineteen standard years,” said Montparnasse, sullenly.

“You are strong and healthy. Yet instead of working honestly, you attack old men in alleyways.”

Montparnasse shrugged, helpless in the fierce grip of the old man. “Work bores me. Look, clearly I made a mistake here.” He patted at one of his pockets, coming up with a vial of glowing red liquid. “Come on, let me go. I’ll give you a free sample. No hard feelings, eh?”

The old man frowned, but did not release him. “What is that?”

“Death stick,” said Montparnasse, who believed in diversifying his criminal endeavors. “It’ll make you feel better than you’ve ever felt, old man.”

“You...sell these death sticks.” The old man seemed sunk in profound thought.

“Sure, I sell them. You want to buy some?” Montparnasse, thinking his strange captor distracted, gave a violent wriggle, aiming to knee the old man in the groin, and succeeded only in wrenching his own arm nearly out of his socket. The old man restrained both of Montparnasse’s arms with one hand, as easily as if he were some kind of crowd control droid.

“You don’t want to sell death sticks,” the man said at last, in a disbelieving, almost pleading voice.

A tremor of doubt--doubt!--crept into the breast of Montparnasse, he who had never doubted at all that the galaxy owed him whatever he wanted, in recompense for his birth. “I...don’t want to sell death sticks?”

“I think you ought to go home and rethink your life,” the old man said kindly.

“I want to go home and rethink my life,” Montparnasse repeated. His head felt strange, floaty and warm, like he was high on spice. Yes, the old man was right. He ought to rethink his life.

“My poor child, you are on the wrong road,” the old man said, smoothing Montparnasse’s coat back down. “It is not comfortable to become a criminal. It is less disagreeable to be an honest man. Go and ponder on what I have said to you. Now, what did you want of me? My money? Here it is.” He pressed a credit chip into the boy’s hand, which Montparnasse dimly noted was a large denomination, and then gave him a little shove towards the exit of the alley. Montparnasse went, his mind churning in unaccustomed turmoil.

He did not notice until much later that his supply of death sticks had mysteriously vanished from his pocket.

* * *

The Jedi Order had bestowed a Knighthood upon Javert at eighteen. Severe from the cradle, he had never struggled with most of the tenets of the order. He felt no passion, save for justice; fear had never touched his heart, and so too had anger and hate eluded him. He sought knowledge and order; he believed with all of his wooden heart in defending society.

At fifty, he remained a Knight, and only a Knight. He was, the Council had told him apologetically, not temperamentally suited to teaching an apprentice. This he bore also with grace, and not a little relief. Patience was ever his struggle, and it was on patience that he was meditating when his comlink buzzed.

It was an acquaintance in the Sector Four police force, Enri. Javert had arranged to be informed of certain unusual circumstances, for interests of his own. “We picked up another one of your weirdos,” Enri said, when Javert answered the com.

At once Javert sat up very straight on his narrow bed; his posture took on the attitude of a sandtiger sighting prey. “Yes? Tell me!”

“It’s the damnedest thing,” said Enri. “His name is Montparnasse: says he’s a thief and a drug dealer. Sometimes takes hits. We picked him up on level 387, trying to flush a thousand credits’ worth of death sticks down a public toilet. Said he ran into an old man who told him to rethink his life.”

Knight Javert began to laugh, silently, his lips peeling back from teeth which seemed as if they should be pointed. He was more a tiger than ever.

“Javert?” said Enri, his voice crackling with static.

“Yes, everything is fine,” said Javert, a terrible mirth still in his face. “Don’t let him go. I will be down at the station at once.”

He clicked off the com, still smiling, and said to himself with the profound start of a tiger who had recovered his prey, “ _Jean Valjean._ ”


End file.
